August 4, 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

USS Maddox

August 4, 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident occurs. What happened? That is still in dispute.

On August 2, the destroyer USS Maddox, while performing a signals intelligence patrol, was approached by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Maddox fired warning shots, and the North Vietnamese boats attacked with torpedoes and machine gun fire. In the ensuing engagement, one U.S. aircraft, which had been launched from aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, was damaged, all of the North Vietnamese torpedo boats were damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed, with six more wounded. There were no U.S. casualties. According to its report, the Maddox was "unscathed except for a single bullet hole from a Vietnamese machine gun round."

Two days later, on August 4, another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, joined Maddox on its mission. That evening, the ships opened fire on radar and sonar returns that had been preceded by communications intercepts which U.S. forces claimed meant an attack was imminent. The commander of the Maddox task force, Captain John Herrick, reported that the ships were being attacked by North Vietnamese boats -- when in fact, there were no North Vietnamese boats present.

While Herrick soon reported doubts regarding the task force’s initial perceptions of the attack, the Administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on wrongly interpreted National Security Agency communications intercepts to conclude that the attack was real.

While doubts regarding the perceived second attack have been expressed since 1964, it was not until years later that it was shown conclusively never to have happened. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War -- the title taken from a German expression for the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations -- Robert S. McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, admitted that the August 2 attack on the Maddox happened; but that the August 4 attack, for which LBJ authorized retaliation, never happened.

The outcome of these two confrontations was the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted LBJ the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "Communist aggression." The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces to South Vietnam, and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

The Resolution passed the House of Representatives unanimously, 416-0. It passed the Senate by a vote of 88-2. While 10 Senators were not present for the vote, the only ones to vote against it were Ernest Gruening of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon, both Democrats. (Morse, first elected in 1944 as a Republican, became an independent in 1952 because of disgust over McCarthyism, and switched to the Democrats so he could be in the majority and chair committees after the Democratic takeover following in the 1954 elections.)

On the NBC TV series The West Wing, John Spencer played Leo McGarry, White House Chief of Staff, and a U.S. Air Force veteran who had been shot down over North Vietnam in 1970, and barely rescued before he could be taken prisoner.

In the 2001 episode "The War at Home," where a military operation has gone badly, show creator and episode writer Aaron Sorkin had McGarry tell President Jed Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, that if he could go back in time to any moment, it would be to August 4, 1964, to tell Johnson, "Mr. President, don't do it. Don't consider authorizing a massive commitment of troops and throwing in our lot with torturers and panderers, leaders without principle and soldiers without conviction, no clear mission, and no end in sight."

While South Vietnam's President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, the country's State Counsellor, had been assassinated in a coup the preceding November, the new President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu pretty much stayed the course, including being Catholic oppressing Buddhist, with under-regulated capitalism and corruption. General Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ran the country's armed forces. He was a rival of Thiệu, but the Army talked Thiệu into accepting Kỳ as Vice President in 1967, and that made things worse. So when it came to the real-life leaders of South Vietnam, Sorkin knew what he was talking about.

But Johnson was running for re-election. All the polls showed he would easily beat the Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. But he was concerned that, if he let the Gulf of Tonkin Incident go, he would be seen as "weak" and "soft on Communism." Instead of saying, "Let them say that, the American people know I'm handling things well," he panicked, and sent America down a path that led to nearly 60,000 deaths in 8 years -- around 36,000 by the time he left office on January 20, 1969 -- taking all his accomplishments, and they were many, some of them changing things tremendously for the better, and giving them the rebuttal, "Yes, but... "

After leaving office, he told historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who was working on his authorized biography, "I knew from the start that, if I left the woman I loved, the Great Society, in order to fight that bitch of a war, then I would lose everything. All my programs. All my hopes. All my dreams." He had blown it, and he knew it.

Greuning and Morse were both defeated for re-election to the Senate in 1968: Gruening by 2,000 votes, Morse by 3,500.

USS Maddox, launched in 1944 during World War II, was the 3rd ship named for Captain William Maddox, U.S. Marine Corps, a hero of the Battle of Santa Clara in the Mexican-American War in 1847. It remained in service until 1972, was sold to Taiwan, and scrapped in 1985. Her Captain, John Herrick, lived until 1997. His brother, Curtis Herrick, was a General in the U.S. Army.

USS Turner Joy, launched in 1958, was named for an Admiral who served as Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. Only this 1 ship, as yet, has been named for him. Since 1991, she has been a museum ship berthed at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the Seattle suburb of Bremerton, Washington. Her commanding officer, Commander Robert C. Barnhart Jr., lived until 2012.

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August 4, 1964 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Kansas City Athletics, 5-1 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. The only Yankee run came on a home run by Mickey Mantle. John O'Donoghue, later to be a member of the Seattle Pilots and mentioned in Ball Four, the book by 1964 Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton, outpitched Hall-of-Famer Whitey Ford.

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 4-3 at Shea Stadium. Jim Davenport singled home the winning run in the top of the 14th inning. Willie Mays went 0-for-5, but did draw a walk. Despite the length of this game, no home runs were hit.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field, 5-1 and 10-7. Sandy Koufax won the opener, and Roberto Clemente went 0-for-3. But in the nightcap, Clemente went 3-for-5 with an RBI. Willie Stargell didn't play in the 1st game, but went 1-for-5 with 2 RBIs in the 2nd.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-2 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Cincinnati Reds swept a doubleheader from the Milwaukee Braves at Crosley Field, 5-2 and 4-2. Over the 2 games, Frank Robinson went 3-for-7 with a solo home run, and Hank Aaron went 0-for-8.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. They did this despite Al Kaline going 0-for-4.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 12-4 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Harmon Killebrew went 4-for-5 with a home run and 4 RBIs. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs.

* The Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-0 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Lew Burdette, better known as a Milwaukee Brave, allowed 10 hits, but still pitched a shutout. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4, and Lou Brock went 2-for-4 with a stolen base.

* And the Los Angeles Angels beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which the Angels shared with the Dodgers from 1962 to 1965. Angel pitcher Don Lee had to leave the game in the 5th inning due to injury, and Barry Latman went the rest of the way, and they combined for a 7-hit shutout. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-4.